One day not long ago, local landlord David Colville said he was visiting one of his properties in the area of Fifth Street.

He said he could see Fall River Mayor Will Flanagan in Griffin Park, playing basketball with some neighborhood kids.

“Those are the kids in the families I rent to,” Colville said. “Those are the people he wants out.”

Colville said all the housing he owns in Fall River is low-income.

“They’re still citizens of Fall River,” the embattled landlord said. “But you don’t hear from them.”

The first thing he wants known is that, for a lot of the time he’s owned property in Fall River, he hasn’t been an absentee landlord.

“I lived on Choate Street for six or seven years,” he said. “It was easy for my tenants to find me.”

So what happened?

In the past few weeks, the city shut down a Colville-owned property on County Street, pulled the license for a rooming house he owns on Pine Street and is pondering following foreclosure procedures against the other 34 properties he owns in Fall River.

The city says he owes more than half a million dollars in unpaid water and tax bills. Inspectors say his properties aren’t fit to inhabit, and the police say his County Street property was a magnet for criminals.

“The biggest mistake I ever made was to buy County Street,“ Colville said Thursday. “I couldn’t control what went on around that building.”

Colville said he installed security lights and new exterior doors on the County Street buildings. Drug dealers broke in and did business in the halls, brazenly enough that they’d order takeout food and have it delivered to them in the hallways.

Colville, a mechanical engineer by education, said he doesn’t own rental property in any city other than Fall River.

Why Fall River?

“Twenty-five years ago, somebody said they had five properties around The Magic Mushroom on Pleasant Street,” Colville said. “I took a look, it wasn’t bad property.”

Colville bought, and over the years, he kept buying.

Colville said he bought cheap, sometimes distressed properties in poor neighborhoods, believing the market would rise and he could sell at a profit. Meanwhile, he had rent coming in to cover expenses and provide a profit. His rent for a two-bedroom averages $600, he said. He gets an average of $700 for a three-bedroom.

“Some of the people I rent to, they’re the children of people who rented from me,” he said.

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Colville said few of his apartments are Section 8. But he said he did take money from a government program intended to house the homeless.

Colville admitted he owes the city more than $500,000, but said he had arranged to refinance some of his properties to raise money and pay what he owes.

“Then, the city closed County Street and the bank wouldn’t make the loan,” he said.

Colville said his rooming house on Pine Street, recently closed, has been regularly inspected for the past seven years.

“The building inspector inspects it once a year,” he said. “The Fire Department inspects it every quarter. I’ve always passed.”

Colville admitted he has trouble paying water bills on his houses. He said the faltering economy in the past seven years has meant tenants lose jobs, and they can’t pay rent.

“They lose a job, you get partial payments, they fall further and further behind,” he said. “Pretty increasingly, my problem has been rent.”

Colville said he took some steps to dig himself out.

“I bought more properties,” he said. “I thought I’d get some more cash flow.”

Colville said he employs three maintenance men and that he is available to his tenants Monday through Saturday.